Chapter 13: A Really, Really Long Night

Sometime later, I cracked one eye to see Qrow and Tai standing over me. Or rather, their really, really blurry outlines. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew they were talking to me, but their voices were too muffled to hear and their faces too hazy to lip-read. I had no idea what was going on, where I was, nor why I was wrapped up in my cloak like some kind of human-sized burrito, but I knew I was comfy and warm. I tried to tell the boys to shut up and leave me alone, but at best all I could manage was a disgruntled moan. Then the shaking started.

I couldn't swat at the hands that had me by the shoulders as they tried to rouse me, so instead I opened my eyes and growled again. This time when my eyes opened, I could make out a fingertip glowing with golden light hovering in front of my face. Before I realized who it belonged to, Tai flicked me in the forehead, jolting me with his own aura. A moment of clarity from my stupor, accompanied by a spasm of pain like if I'd just stuck my face into a bug zapper, caused me to sit up quickly and whirl on my teammate. I still couldn't do anything, though, swaddled in my cloak like a tightly-wrapped blanket.

"Ow! The hell was that for?" I exclaimed, wishing I could slug him right there.

"I'm trying to tell you to activate your aura! It'll help with the hangover. We need to go, and you'll never get past the campus checkpoint that drunk!"

"What? I… Wh-where…" The shock from Tai's tiny transfer of aura into my head abated, and the world began to spin once again. My teammate's next sentence reached my ears as nothing more than an indecipherable mess of syllables, and I felt myself falling backward. My head didn't slam into the ground, however. I think Qrow caught me, but I couldn't be sure.

Moments later, an even stronger shock delivered to either side of my head painfully ripped me back into a semi-conscious state. "OW! Again?! Can you stop that?"

"You need to listen to me. I think they know who I am. We need to get the hell out of this alley and back on campus before an enforcer shows up. Or worse. Now activate your aura, come on!"

"Who? Who knows who you are?"

"No time to explain, just do it! I can't steer the bike and hang on to you at the same time."

"Ugghh… Fine," I grumbled. The intense headache made concentration painful and difficult to say the least, but after a moment I was able to summon up my protective barrier and breathe a sigh of relief as its healing effects went to work on undoing the damage from a night of bad decisions.

Qrow heaved me to my feet, and after a few shaky moments I unfurled my cloak and draped it properly about my shoulders once again. "Where's Raven?"

"Passed out in the car. She's next, but we figured we'd need some backup if we're gonna zap her out of it," Qrow replied.

"Fair point."

"We don't have time to do it here, though," Tai said. I looked around. We were in the alley that led to the outer entrance to Zak's club. "They could send someone any second."

"Still don't know who you're talking about," I grumbled in response.

"Later. Get on the bike. Qrow, can you drive Val's car?"

Qrow looked a little annoyed that Tai would even ask, but even I sensed the apprehensive note in his voice as he assured us he could. "What? Pfft. Of course, I can. If Raven can, I can. I really… I can. Don't uh… Don't worry."

"Might as well chock that one up as a loss," I laughed. "Of course, I could just take the bike, Qrow could ride with me, and you could drive the car…"

"Not happening," Tai replied, clearly beyond unwilling to let me take his pride and joy for a spin, especially in my condition. "We're going. Qrow, you'll figure it out. Good lu— Uh… I mean, just uh… Just believe. In yourself. Or… Something. Whatever. Get in the car and figure it out, loser." With that, the three of us, plus an unconscious Raven, rumbled away from Zak's in a rush that I still didn't understand the reason for.

The guards at the checkpoint seemed less-than-convinced of our story at having gone driving around to explore the city at night, but they let us through, probably too tired themselves after a long, uneventful night on watch to make a scene. Fortunately, neither Tai or Qrow seemed in the mood to race each other up to the student parking garage either, so the drive up went without any near-death encounters as well.

A wave of exhaustion hit me as soon as I lowered my aura and swung my leg off of Tai's bike. A moment or two proved that the hangover wasn't completely gone, either, as my head began to throb and the lighting in the parking deck caused pain and pressure at the back of my eyeballs that I never, ever wanted to experience again. "I can't believe you guys convinced me to go out. This is what counts as fun for you? I feel like I've been hit by a boarbatusk."

"Hey, when you go out drinking, it's not the destination. It's the journey," Qrow laughed as he pulled his still-catatonic sister from the passenger seat.

"What journey? I don't remember a thing."

"Oh," Tai said, shooting Qrow a look. "We do. Told you we'd kill it on the dance floor. You challenged everyone to a dance off. Even yourself. And don't even get me started on karaoke. That was the stuff of legend."

I felt my face flush red, both from the lingering effects of alcohol and this new revelation. "You're kidding. There's no way I—"

"Oh, you definitely did," Qrow interrupted. "Turns out, you and Raven get along fine when you're trashed."

"What?"

"Here, check this out." Qrow flicked open his scroll and opened his video gallery. The short clip of me and Raven, back-to-back, singing loudly and badly into a karaoke microphone was enough evidence that my teammate wasn't lying. The next video he swiped to had me and Tai breakdancing on the dancefloor, with dozens of drunk college-age kids and other bar patrons cheering us on. Even I didn't know I had moves like that.

"How much did I drink?" I asked, still in shock.

"Oh, Zak cut you off after you and Raven polished off that bottle of Dragon's Tears. By then, though… Yeah it was way too late. You two were gone."

I couldn't even begin to describe my embarrassment. That kind of behavior was against everything I'd been taught growing up. "I can't believe I let you guys convince me to do that."

"Didn't take much convincing, if I remember right. Guess you just didn't know what to expect."

"Yeah, I didn't expect to make an idiot out of myself!"

"Please. Everyone else in there was the same way, and you'll probably never see any of them again in your life. Except us. Don't worry, it'll never make it on to the CCNet. Just something to laugh about when we all graduate, huh?"

"Yeah, I know they won't go online. Because I'll kill both of you if any of those vids ever make it to the net. Or are ever shown to GLDN. Or spoken about. Or if you even think about them ever again."

"So, you're saying I definitely shouldn't do this?" Tai's finger was poised over the 'send' button on his scroll, with yet another embarrassing clip of my drunken antics the night before playing in his video gallery and 'Gretchen Rainart' tagged in the recipient's list.

"NO!" I lunged after his hand, trying to knock the scroll away, but he held it easily out of reach. "Tai! NO!"

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Calm down. Yeah, like I said. Just between us as teammates."

"I hate you both."

"No you don't. Come on, I promised you'd have fun, and you did. I didn't necessarily promise you'd remember any of it."

I gave an exasperated sigh. "What's the point of having fun if you don't remember any of it? We're not doing that again."

"Fine, fine. Not like we could, anyway."

"Yeah, there's that, too. What's the deal? Can you finally tell me, now? Why were we in such a hurry to get out of there? And what's that mark on your arm that got us in there in the first place?"

Before he could answer, Tai's scroll began to ring. Despite my generally sour mood, I laughed at the ringtone, recognizing the tune. "Wait, is that… That's the theme to Super Mecha Samurai V, isn't it? Didn't take you for the anime watching type."

"What? No, it's just… It's a good song!" Tai insisted defensively as he looked down at the caller I.D. and fumbled for the button to accept the call. "It's… Kent. Why would he be calling at this time in the morning? Hang on. I gotta take this." He raised the scroll to his ear and answered. "Hey," he said simply, feigning tiredness so to sound like the call had just awoken him. He listened for a moment, and I saw the emotion and color drain from his face. All pretense dropped from his voice, too. "It… No. You're sure it's her?" I heard the muffled response, and I was struck by the stone-faced expression that suddenly took over the face that moments before had been teasing and carefree. Tai was silent for what seemed like a long time after the person finished speaking, before finally responding. "Alright. I'll meet him at the docks in ten." With that, Tai hung up and spun on his heel towards the exit from student parking, back onto campus.

"Who was that?" I asked, concerned at Tai's sudden shift in tone and demeanor during that call.

Tai kept walking doggedly for a few more meters, before turning back and responding, "I've gotta head downtown. My dad's sending another V.P.D. officer to pick me up at the docks. You two deal with Raven, I'll be back later."

"What? What does he want you for? Think he knows where we've been all night?" Qrow wondered, raising an eyebrow.

"No. Even if he did, I doubt he'd care. That's how he is. It's for a body identification. It's… Kent thinks it's an old friend of mine."

"Dad… Kent? That the officer who gave you the tonfas?" I asked.

"Yeah. Like I said, closest thing to a real dad I ever had, so that's kinda just what I call him. He's a lieutenant with V.P.D., lives on Patch when he's not on tour four days out of every week. I guess he's working this morning."

"We're coming with you," I insisted.

"No, you're not. This is a side of my life I put behind me years ago. It's ugly business."

"What, afraid we're gonna be scarred for life or something? We're gonna be huntsmen, man. Death is gonna follow us around our entire lives once we get outta here. I guarantee you it ain't nothing Raven or I ain't seen before."

"And you?" Tai asked, turning to me.

"Ditto what the skinny one said," I replied, tilting my head over to Qrow. "You're gonna need us there, I'll bet."

Tai sighed after a moment, and shrugged. "Alright. Come on."

Qrow held up his hand. "Wait, we just going to leave Raven there?"

"She'll be fine. She can portal out of there when she comes to, right?"

"She needs her sword to use her semblance," Qrow replied.

I'd heard of people whose semblances were tied to their weapons like that. For a moment, it seemed like we'd have to waste time waking her up, but then I remembered something. Reaching back to my magnetic plate on my belt, I retrieved the little red-bladed boot-knife Raven had almost drawn on Zak. "I've still got her knife, here. Would that work?"

Qrow shrugged. "Guess we'll see. Leave it on the dash and close the garage door. At least we won't have to worry about pissing her off when she's hungover. She's about a thousand times meaner than you were when she gets woken up drunk like that."

"I wasn't that bad," I said defensively, though even now I couldn't quite remember the moment I'd woken up, even though it'd only been about thirty minutes before.

"You tried to bite my hand off when I shook you awake," Tai replied flatly.

"I did what?"

"Don't worry about it. Now, we gotta go." The three of us headed off, leaving Raven to sleep off the booze in the passenger seat of Val's car.

"So… Body I.D.?" Qrow asked as we fell into step beside our teammate. "You said it might be a friend of yours?"

"I don't know, and I won't until I see her."

"Her?" Qrow prodded. Tai didn't answer, which prompted Qrow to look over at me and shrug.

"In the bar, you asked Zak about someone. A girl. Is that who your dad thinks it might be?" I pressed. Tai just shrugged. "Then before that. Back in the room during that meeting, when you said you were with 'not the best kind of people' when you were alone on the streets. What did you mean?"

"You guys really wanna know? Fine," Tai finally replied, clearly exasperated at the volley of personal questions. I'd never seen him get like this before. "Firstly, I was never alone. I had her. Secondly, I… What do you know about the crime families that run Vale's underground?"

"You mean like… The Xiong's?" I replied. My dad had told me a little about what he'd seen on some of his trips to Vale in the past.

"Xiong, Tsov, and Tao. The three families. They've all had a fragile alliance after the last territory war ended up nearly crippling the Tsov and Tao families, but the patriarch of the Xiong family, Jīn, allowed them to continue existing if they paid him respects. Hefty cuts from their own separate drug trades, black markets, all that. Since then he's become the richest man in Vale. Some say he's got the council in his pocket. I believe it, too. And it's all hidden behind his clubs. To anyone who doesn't want to dig too deep, he's just a businessman running a string of high and… Well, low-end bars all over Vale. And anyone who does snoop too far usually ends up dead. Zak's is one of his lower-end dives. Caters to those who don't want to be seen. I was stupid to think we wouldn't get noticed there, though."

"This Jīn Xiong sounds like a fun guy," Qrow mumbled.

"I wouldn't know. Never met him, and I don't know anyone who has. I was way down the line when I ran with the Xiongs, y'know, petty thievery, drug running, just enough to earn my keep. I did run into his head enforcer, once. He was paying a visit to my boss' boss. Let's just say my boss got a promotion after that, and I escaped soon after."

"Wait, so… You were a gang member?"

"Yeah. That's what this means," Tai said as he pulled up his sleeve once again and showed Qrow and I the mark that had been concealed beneath. I'd been right. It was a scar from a burn of some kind… It took me a moment before I realized the burn had been a brand, and the brand was of a stylized ursa skull.

I looked over for Qrow's reaction, in time to see him staring intently at the beastly mark. The look on his face was one of intense interest and surprise. "Hm," he said after regarding the brand for a few long moments. "When'd you get that?"

"I think I was nine when I finally ran away from my last foster home. Wasn't long after that I fell in with the Xiongs, and they gave me that. Supposed to be for my protection, so some Tao or Tsov wouldn't try and rough me up. I think it was really more to show that they owned me, once I got burned. The only reason I was able to get out of that life was because as far as they all know, I got shipped off to a juvy down south when Kent arrested me.

"So, they don't have people in the prisons?" Qrow asked. "Enforcers who get arrested on purpose to keep their people in line on the inside?"

"They do. But I never went to juvy. Kent never filed the report. As far as the Family's concerned, I'm behind bars. Been four years and no one has come after me yet."

"Hm. Guess you never got deep enough for them to care," Qrow replied.

"Guess not."

"But that's how you got us into that bar. With your old mark. That's what you meant when you said you might as well make that piece of your past useful, and you think someone recognized you. That's why we had to leave in such a hurry."

"That about sums it up, yeah," Tai replied with a nod, though he didn't turn to look at us as he spoke. "I'm not going back to that life. I can't. But it was a stupid decision to get myself noticed like that. I just wanted to see her."

"Wait, so that's why you risked going back to that bar? You hoped you'd find her, and… Then what? What would you have done?"

"Don't know. Let her know I was alright, maybe. Doesn't matter now, though. If Kent is right, and it's her they've found, it won't ever matter."

We walked in silence for a while more, all the way to the docks without another word, in fact. I could almost hear Tai's thoughts the whole time though. Whoever 'she' was, they'd obviously been close. The possibility that this mystery girl was dead was troubling him in a way I wasn't used to seeing him troubled. Once we reached the three enormous, circular landing pads that hung out over the western cliffs above the vast, moonlit surface of the lake below, I scanned the brightly-lit midnight cityscape. Even now, Vale was alive with activity, with shift workers from the industrial district getting off work and the nightlife still going strong in the commercial district. I shuddered when I thought about what Tai had said, that the whole place was running on the whims of a single, evil man.

"Bet that's your ride," Qrow remarked, pointing to a quickly growing black speck that zoomed low over the water below before pitching up towards the pads. A police hovercruiser. I'd seen them before. Quick, mobile little air cars that weren't bound by roads to get cops where they needed to be. This one was blacked out and unmarked, but I could still see the powerful spotlight mounted in the A-pillar and the concealable ports for a pair of Variable Ammunition Vehicular Defense cannons in the grille. Pretty slick, I thought to myself as the small, four-door craft banked in and landed in front of Tai.

"Shotgun!"

"Shotg—Dammit," Qrow growled after I beat him to it.

Tai grinned, snapping himself out of the deep thought he'd been in as we'd made our way across campus. "Guess it's you and me in the cage, man. You ever ridden in the back of a cop car before?"

"Nah. There aren't really a lot of cops out where I'm from."

"First time for everything, I guess. I feel like I spent a lot of my childhood in the back of one of these things. Most of the time I had cuffs on, too." Tai opened the front door for me, leaning in to see who'd come to get him. "Hey, Lennie."

"What's up, little man?" I heard a boisterous voice reply from the driver's seat. "Who's this, now?"

"It's my team, or, most of 'em, anyway. I'm gonna ride in the cage, aight?"

"Letting the lady take shotgun, huh? Man. The L-T really turned you into a gentleman, didn't he?"

"Nah, she just called it before I could. And I can't very well break the rules of shotgun, now can I?" Tai and Lennie both laughed as my teammate stepped away from the doorway and I swung down inside the low-slung cruiser. I found myself beside a gigantic, heavily muscled, dark-skinned man with a friendly ear-to-ear grin.

"Leonard Francis. Call me Lennie, call me Francis, Detective, I don't care just so long as you don't call me late for dinner! And who might you be, miss…"

"I'm Summer Rose," I said, grinning. Lennie's powerful personality seemed to be matched only by his physical size. I wasn't sure how he fit in the driver's seat of the relatively small hovercar. Despite my general introversion, I immediately felt comfortable with the jovial inner-city detective as I extended my hand.

Detective Francis' eyes bored into mine as my hand disappeared into his and we shook. "Rose? No way. You wouldn't happen to be… You Cedric's kid?"

I froze. "You… Know my dad too?"

"Lotta people around here know your Papa, little miss. He's made a bit of a splash helping us out over the last year. Sure got a thing for working in the shadows, y'know? Heh," Lennie's grin widened at the clever reference to my father's semblance. "Damn. So, following in dad's footsteps, huh? Keepin' my boy back there in line?" Lennie jerked his head back to indicate Tai, who grinned at us in the rearview mirror from the enclosed detainee transport seats.

"As well as I can, Sir," I replied. "He's only a problem when I let him get stupid ideas." I shot a pointed look back at Tai, who shrugged coyly like he had no idea what I was talking about.

"First thing's first, cut the 'Sir' crap. I work for a living. And second, whaddyou mean, stupid ideas? Hey, you already trying to get in trouble up here at this fancy school of yours, kid?

"Me? Trouble? Never. Summer's clearly overexaggerating."

"He's not really the problem. It's our fourth teammate. She can be… Difficult to get along with."

"She attacked you in our dorm room," Tai added flatly. "I'd say 'difficult' is an understatement."

"Hmph," the detective grumbled with a shrug. "It's like that, huh? I wouldn't think too much of it."

"Wouldn't think too much of it? She almost sent our team leader to the infirmary."

"Hell, Tai, some of my best friends started out wanting to beat the crap outta me too. Had ourselves our share of brawls. Now they're all co-owners of my gym with me downtown, and half of 'em are on the force with me too. Just keep after your teammate. Don't back down, but don't give up on her either. You'll find something you have in common eventually."

I looked back at Qrow, silently wondering what he thought of that bit of advice as the car sped back over the lake towards the industrial district. He just stared out the window, but the wry look and eye roll I saw reflected in the tinted glass were enough to show his skepticism.

The car was silent for a few moments, moments that dragged on into an awkwardly long pause in the conversation. That was, until Tai finally spoke. "So… Where'd they find her?"

Lennie sighed, as if he knew Tai would start asking questions sooner or later. I sensed deep empathy in the detective's voice as he replied. "Down by the shipyard. Body's pretty clean, not even any blood, really. You'll see when we get there."

"Yeah," Tai said absently, a faraway look in his eyes as he continued to stare blankly out the window.

I saw the blue and red lights reflecting off the walls and widows of the various warehouses and shipping offices that lined the commercial wharfs long before we landed. As soon as we touched down, I stepped out and opened the door for Tai, looking into his eyes as I did. "My turn to ask, blondie. You good?"

Tai forced himself to smile, before putting his hand on my shoulder as he walked past. "Yeah, I think. Thanks." The suspension on the landing claws that had extended as we'd landed groaned and the hovercar rose noticeably as Lennie unfolded from the driver's side, towering over the roof of the vehicle and pointing the way for the two of us to head as he let Qrow out. Muffled radio chatter could be heard from other marked cruisers that had pulled up around the scene. A mobile crime lab was set up inside the crime scene, at the entrance to a small alleyway we could see ahead. Safe bet the girl Tai had been asked to identify was in there.

"Tai!" A man with thick salt and pepper hair and equally dense moustache waved my teammate over from behind a line of holographic crime scene boundary markers. I followed him, stopping short of the barrier as he crossed. Qrow walked right through behind Tai without so much as a thought to whether or not he was supposed to or not, and I followed him in after nobody stopped him.

"Hey Kent," Tai said once we reached the uniformed officer with a bright gold bar on his collar.

"Who're the other two?"

"That's my team leader, Summer, and that's Qrow, he's one of my two other teammates."

"You're cool with them being here for this?" Kent asked as he pushed his thick horn-rimmed glasses up his nose.

"Don't see why not," Tai shrugged. "So long as they don't mess up your crime scene."

"That's just it, kid. There's nothing to mess up. Never seen a killing so clean. Can't find even a scrap of evidence to log."

"How'd it happen?" I asked.

"Single stab-wound, straight to the heart. Coroner said it was cauterized immediately, not a drop of blood on her."

"And you've never seen a wound like it?"

"Let me run this crime scene, little lady. Whatever questions you got, I already asked 'em."

"Oh. Of… Of course. Sorry."

"Don't worry about it. Now, this is Tai's part. Can you head down there and check, make sure it's your girl?"

"Yeah just, just gimme a sec, alright?" Tai acknowledged before turning back to Qrow and me.

"What did he mean by 'your girl'?" I asked after a moment.

"Suppose there's no reason for you not to know. Her name's Jade. She was my foster sister at our last home, ran off with me. We ended up joining up with the Xiong's together. We'd watch each other's backs on runs of petty thievery. Always said we were gonna make it big together in the organization. Till I got arrested, that was. See, I let myself get nabbed on purpose, trying to escape when things were starting to get bad. I dunno, Jade liked the life, I guess. Told me I was stupid for trying to get away from it all, that we wouldn't ever have it so good, y'know. But she was wrong. I told Kent about her, asked if he'd keep an eye out for her. I couldn't convince her to come with me, but I always told myself, all the way through combat school, that I was gonna find her. I was gonna show her what I've learned, let her meet Kent's family, and hope she'd change but… If that's her under that sheet back there, none of that matters anymore. This life killed her just like it would have me, eventually."

"Let's hope it's not." Surprisingly, the words of encouragement came not from me, but from Qrow. "Your cop buddies could have it wrong. Been a while since you've seen her, right? Your description might not be right anymore."

"Want us to come with you?" I asked.

"No. I'll do this myself." With that, Tai turned and headed resolutely down the alley to where the loose blue sheet lay over a human-shaped lump that was still sprawled exactly where the cops had found her. I saw him draw back the covering, watched as his head bowed and he took the corpse's hand, gripping it tightly as his shoulders shook. My heart sank… I'd half hoped for Tai's sake that it wasn't her. Nothing but futile, foolish optimism, that. Tai pulled the covering down further, inspecting the wound, before crossing Jade's hands over her abdomen and pulling the cover back over her body.

His stricken face was the first thing the streetlamps and police lights illuminated as he emerged from the gloom. I'd seen him shaking, but his eyes were dry, piercing blue and clear as ever. His face was completely devoid of expression, and I could tell he wasn't going to let himself cry. "It's her," he said softly to Kent as he reached the three of us. "She'd dyed her hair again. Got a new tattoo I don't remember her having before. But it was definitely her."

"Alright, son. Now that that's taken care of, we can try to move this investigation forward a little. We don't have much beyond that wound, so all we can do is try and see if it matches anything that's come up in old cases. I'm sorry, but being straight up with you, that's probably the best we're gonna be able to do." Tai nodded forlornly, turning to leave. "Hey, Tai," Kent added after a moment, reaching out and grabbing his ward's arm.

"What?"

"I know you're gonna want to find out who did this, and why. I don't think I'd be able to stop you, either. Just remember, whoever killed her may have known it might bring you back into their games. Just… Stay safe, alright?"

"Got it, Kent. Thanks."

"He's got us watching his back too, Lieutenant," I added, with Qrow nodding his affirmation.

"That's good to know, at least. I know you kids can handle yourselves, else you wouldn't be up at that school."

"It's better than that, L-T," Lennie said as he finished talking with one of the coroners and headed our way.

"Yeah?" Kent asked.

The detective nodded at me. "She tell you her last name?"

"Nuh-uh. Well?" Kent prompted, turning in my direction expectantly.

"It's Rose, Sir."

"Rose. Well I'll be hanged. Cedric's kid. Damn, how'd I not see it? Even got his eyes." I tensed up as the lieutenant said that, but realized it was more an off-handed remark than a pointed statement and relaxed. Kent continued speaking, seemingly not picking up on my reaction. "Y'know, he's helped us out a lot over the last year. You two are living back on Patch right now too, aren't you? I think you guys are on the other side of the island from us, but still. I'll have to pay him a visit, tell him I met you."

"Oh, well, uh, last I talked to him, he's heading out to take care of something. Long-term mission. I don't know what it's about, he wouldn't say."

"Huh. Well, ain't that a shame. I was thinking of getting the P.D.'s council rep to set up a bounty mission. Seemed like the kind of thing I figured he'd jump on the second he caught wind of it. Weapons dealer I'd like to have brought in, nothing crazy. Mid-level crook who's been giving us some trouble up in the northside. Bet your dad would've enjoyed the work, stretch out a bit, bash some heads, you know."

I grinned, thinking of how much like some kind of superhero the lieutenant was making my dad sound right then, but my smile evaporated when I looked back to my teammates and once again saw the pain in Tai's eyes from his recent discovery. "I hope I can live up to his reputation, Sir," I said somberly.

As if sensing I cared more about my teammate's wellbeing than discussing my dad's adventures at the moment, Kent tipped his police cap to me and smiled. "I'm sure you will. Nice meeting you, miss. Alright boys," Kent said as turned to the coroners. "You can take her. Got confirmation on an identity… At least her grave'll have a name on it."

The three of us stood together in silence for a minute, watching as two black-jacketed men with the word "CORONER" embroidered across their backs wheeled a stretcher down the alley to pick up Jade's body. Once they placed her in the ambulance and drove off, Tai finally spoke. "Kent's right. I am gonna figure out who did this. I'm gonna find them, and… I'm gonna make sure they pay for what they did."

"I'm in," Qrow said without hesitation. "This whole thing reminds me too much of me and Raven, man. I know she and I don't get along all that great sometimes, but if someone killed her just to get to me, I'd hunt 'em down and make 'em regret the day they were born."

"Thanks, man," Tai said, managing a slight grin.

I put my hand on Tai's shoulder again. "I'll help too. But you have to promise me something, Tai."

"What?"

"You won't kill whoever did it."

"Why not? It's fair."

"Because that's not what huntsmen do. We don't stoop to their level. You cover that burn for a reason, right? That's not you anymore."

Tai sighed. "Yeah. You're right, I guess. Okay. No promises about beating them senseless though before we turn 'em in."

"That I can get behind," I said, smiling.

"Hop on back into the mako, kids," Lennie said as he passed us. "I'll get y'all back to campus. Heck, I'll drop you off right at your dorm, I don't care."

"The heck is a mako?" Qrow asked.

"Guess you're landlocked, where you're from. It's a type of shark. All's you need to know is it's mean, and it's quick, just like my ride, kid."

"Meh. Doesn't do it for me. This thing kinda reminds me of some sort of cat, actually," Qrow replied.

"What, like a jaguar?"

"Yeah, jaguar, puma, I dunno."

"Well, I didn't name it, the manufacturer did," Lennie said in defense of his car. "Now get in.

"Shotgun!" I called once again, shooting a satisfied glance at Qrow.

"Dang it. Again?"

"Deal with it." Tai and I both laughed as we climbed back inside the car. I knew how hard it was for Tai to see what he'd just seen, but to see him laugh again gave me a little hope. We'll catch whoever did this, I promised myself just then. I'll make sure Tai gets the justice he needs, no matter what it takes.